


Time To Play B-Sides

by ChibiFrieza



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s06e15 The French Mistake, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-09
Updated: 2014-02-09
Packaged: 2018-01-11 19:20:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1176904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChibiFrieza/pseuds/ChibiFrieza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>French Mistake flipside: When Sam and Dean crashed through the fourth wall, Jensen and Jared got hurled into the world of Supernatural. This is what happened.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time To Play B-Sides

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Burnin' For You by Blue Öyster Cult.

And the next second they're crashing through actual plate glass, what the _hell_. The stunt co-ordinator had better be fired.

Jensen lands with a grunt that's mostly air, too winded to curse. He's pretty sure there's glass embedded in his shoulder and he almost doesn't dare open his eyes, but it's _pouring_ , and that's not right.

"Wha-" It's hardly a word, mostly a piteous groan from beside him, and he squints his eyes open carefully, still scrunched in case there's, like, glass in his hair that's about to fall into his face. Jared's struggling up, looking dazed and ridiculous, hair plastered across his forehead by the downpour and blood oozing sluggishly from a cut on his cheekbone, the rain washing it mostly away, leaving a watery red trail down the side of his face.

"You okay?" The question's automatic: if his co-star's hurt, that means delays and inconvenience. Best to know the situation as quickly as possible. Jensen sits up himself, gingerly trying to avoid cutting himself any more than he probably already has. Dammit, what the hell is with the rain? He can't even tell if he's bleeding.

"I dunno." Jared looks down, trying to assess, and shakes his head. "Think so." He starts to stand, and Jensen scrambles up as well, trying not to run afoul of any more glass. His shoulder's hurting like a bitch, and he wobbles a little getting to his feet, falling into Jared. Jared, infuriatingly, seems perfectly stable, and steadies Jensen until he pulls away, scowling. Lightning flashes, painfully bright, and the thunder is immediate and deafening.

The film crew is nowhere in sight.

Instead, Lanette's standing there, looking mad as hell, and Jensen is sure they've already shot this scene.

"Didn't we shoot this yesterday?" he asks Jared, raising his voice over the wind and thunder.

"Pretty sure, yeah," says Jared, and he looks spooked, like, seriously about to bolt. Jensen's feeling a little skittish himself, but he's not about to let on.

"Hey, Lanette," he calls, immediately feeling like a moron for trying to sound casual in the midst of all this. "What's going on?"

Lanette fixes him with a glare so icy he's surprised the rain doesn't freeze between them. Then, abruptly, she vanishes.

Jensen realises his mouth's gaping open when he chokes on a swerving blast of rain. Sputtering, he turns to Jared, and they stare at one another helplessly for a moment. Then Jared's gaze travels down and his eyes widen. 

"Jensen, your shoulder," he says, and Jensen looks down at himself and curses. The left shoulder of Dean's jacket is soaked with blood. "Come on," says Jared, "let's get inside."

 _Inside where_ , Jensen wants to ask, because they were supposed to be inside already, but then Jared's turning him carefully, like he's some kind of delicate flower or something, and as he shoves off those gigantic hands in irritation, he registers what's in front of him: Bobby's house, looming out of the thunderstorm like something alive. There's a light on in the room with the shattered window.

He feels briefly lightheaded, then shoves aside his panic for the moment. If he thinks about this right now, he's probably going to pass out, and then Jared will probably carry him inside because the man has no sense of personal boundaries, and there is no way Jensen is going to bear the ignominy of being manhandled by that enormous freak of nature unless a script calls for it.

The window's a little high, so he goes around to the porch, congratulating himself on the way he's not even shaking hardly at all, and that's probably because of the cold and the blood loss anyway. He is an awesome actor.

The door's locked.

He's not _that_ good an actor; he's only ever learned enough about picking locks to pretend really well. He turns to Jared and finds that Jared is no longer there.

For a brief delirious moment he wonders if Jared has simply vanished the same way Lanette did, and then the lock is scraping from the inside and the door swings open, revealing Jared on the other side. Enormous bastard must have gone through the window after all.

"Get in here," he says, and Jensen forgoes objecting to his peremptory tone in favour of getting inside, where it's bright and comparatively warm.

Jared closes the door behind him, and in the light of the entryway, it looks as if Jared's mostly unscathed. Figures.

"We should look at your shoulder," Jared says. Jensen rounds on him, his frayed composure snapping.

" _We_? Since when is there a _we_? We're obviously not on set anymore, so do me a favour and stay out of my face."

Jared's face sets dangerously. "You're right. We're not on set. We're _in Bobby's house_. And it's just us. So the way I see it, _we_ are all we've got right now. I mean, if you'd rather I left you alone to bleed out, I could probably do that, but frankly I'd rather stick with the dude who hates me than wander around out there with who-knows-what. For god's sake, Jensen, for all we know that was _actually Raphael_ back there."

Jensen scoffs, but his heart's not really in it, and now that he's inside in the relative quiet and the adrenaline's wearing off, he's definitely starting to feel a little woozy. He tries surreptitiously moving his shoulder, grimacing when the slight response it gives him brings a renewal of the pain.

"Okay, fine," he says grudgingly. "I guess we might as well stick together." He makes a face, and it's a toss-up whether it's more about how he feels like shit or how much he hates the thought of being stuck with Jared.

 

__

 

 

It's a little tricky finding the bathroom, because they've never seen the house all of a piece before and they're not actually sure of the layout, but they get there eventually. Jared drops the lid on the toilet and nudges Jensen to sit down. Jensen, surprisingly, obeys without protest, and Jared checks the cabinet.

"Hunters, man," he says proudly, pulling out the local version of a first aid kit. Seriously, if they have to deal with whatever the hell is going on, they might as well take advantage of the good parts. Jared's always admired Bobby Singer (well, the character, anyway – the real one's kind of a tool), and this first aid kit is a work of art.

Jensen, meanwhile, has been extricating himself from his jacket and flannel, but when he tries to use his good arm to start tugging the left sleeves off, he lets out a pained cry.

"Whoa, hang on," Jared says. He takes a knee in front of Jensen and pulls his hand away. He peels the sleeves down carefully, both together, his breath catching at the feel of the blood-soaked cloth. They're both so used to fake blood that it should be familiar, but this is real; the strong, metallic smell nauseates him, and he has to breathe carefully, measuredly, for a moment.

Jensen's t-shirt sleeve is soaked, and when Jared finally peels it back, Jensen gives a throaty whimper and then glares at him. Jared's not going to judge, because he's barely holding it together himself, and he's not even hurt much. Just his face, which is honestly bad enough, because his face is perfect and it's going to suck if he ends up with a scar. But Jensen's lost what looks like an awful lot of blood, and he's still bleeding, and Jared is going to do his damnedest to channel Sam Winchester right now, because even if Jensen is an asshole in general, he's still a person, and he's in pain, and Jared doesn't want him to die.

He pulls out the scissors and makes to cut the t-shirt sleeve out of the way, but Jensen shies back.

"Whoa, whoa! What the hell, you're gonna wreck it!"

Jared sighs shortly and cocks his head. "News flash, Jensen: it's wrecked already. You know, on account of you _bleeding all over it_."

Jensen fixes him with a filthy look. "Fine, jackass, you're finding me another one when this is over." Not _when you're done patching up my sorry hide, oh, and by the way, thank you, Jared, for helping me in my time of need_ or anything, the ungrateful jerk. Jared lets out a small huff through his nose and then resolutely ignores how rude Jensen is being. He cuts the whole shirt off just to be rid of it, and Jensen doesn't say anything.

Confronted with Jensen's bare and still sluggishly bleeding shoulder, it's clear that there's at least one smallish piece of glass embedded there. Jared vaguely remembers something from first aid training, like, years ago, about how you shouldn't pull out something that's stuck in somebody, because you don't know how deep it goes and you might damage something worse getting it out and at least while it's in there it's stopping the bleeding. But the alternative right now is leaving glass in Jensen's arm, and he's pretty sure Jensen's going to like that idea even less than he does, and anyway the piece looks really convincingly small.

He figures he'll chance it.

He douses a set of tweezers with alcohol, gets a solid grip on the glass, and pulls it carefully free. As soon as it's out, he claps a gauze pad over it and interrupts Jensen's stream of profanity to say, "Keep pressure on that." He ditches the glass and wets a cloth, then starts cleaning around where Jensen's holding the gauze. There's no more glass, but there are a few little nicks and a fair-sized gash running diagonally underneath the other wound, maybe three inches long, and it starts bleeding a little more eagerly when Jared goes after it. He covers it with gauze too, just for the moment, and then goes rooting around in the kit again one-handed, coming up with a sterile-pack threaded suture needle. He looks contemplatively from the needle to Jensen, but Jensen immediately says,

"Don't even think about it. I don't care who you play on TV, you're not going anywhere near me with sharp things."

Jared pouts a little, but Jensen just keeps glaring, so he finally says, " _Fine_ ," and puts the needle back.

Eventually he gets Jensen's shoulder all cleaned up and patched with butterfly bandages and new gauze taped down, and he even finds some Tylenol 3 for Jensen before he gets started on the cut on his own face.

It doesn't take him long, but by the time he's done, Jensen's pretty much passed out where he sits.

And here is a dilemma. If he disturbs Jensen, Jensen will bitch him out, but if he lets him sleep in the bathroom there will be hell to pay. It's not really a hard decision. Waking him up now, though, is not going to suck any less just because he knows there's a worse alternative.

He goes for the uninjured arm, shaking gently. "Hey, Jensen? Jensen, c'mon, man, you don't wanna sleep here."

"Th'hell I don't," Jensen slurs. "Get offa me."

Steeling himself, he shakes harder, but when Jensen just shoves him off, he takes a deep breath and resigns himself to his fate.

"Not letting you sleep here, you'll kill me in the morning," he mutters, insinuating himself under Jensen's good shoulder and lifting him to his feet.

As anticipated, Jensen gives a surly inchoate growl and tries to get away, but he's pretty far gone now, and he only really succeeds in collapsing into Jared, barely keeping his feet under him. It's actually kind of funny.

"Come on, man, there's gotta be bedrooms upstairs. Think you can make it?"

That gets him the Jensen Ackles Special, imperial asperity mixed with scorn, though somewhat diluted by blood loss, exhaustion and T3.

"Anything you can do, I can do better," he declares, and the stubborn ass makes it all the way up the stairs and to the first bed they come across before collapsing across it angle-wise and refusing to move.

Jared thinks about leaving him there, and then thinks that he'd probably treat his pet alpaca better than that, if Colette had shoes and a bed to be tucked into. So he stifles yet another sigh and gets Dean's boots off of Jensen, then briefly considers the still-damp jeans before deciding that they are not his problem. He manages to get the covers out from under Jensen and spread them over him with a minimum of active resistance, and then Jensen's out like a light.

Jared goes back down to check out the study. The rain's settled down some, but there's a five-foot radius of soaked around the broken window. There's an open laptop and a bloody jar standing empty next to a box of salt on the desk. For a minute or so, Jared just stands there looking. Then, feeling a little silly, he lays a salt line across the wet carpet under the window, shuts the curtains, and takes the laptop with him, turning the light off before he leaves.

There are two beds in that first room they found. He takes the second one without thinking too hard about it. 

With any luck, they'll wake up tomorrow morning in their own beds in their own homes, or maybe in a hospital after a bad stunt, and this will all turn out to be a nightmare or a concussion dream.

He doesn't really think that's going to happen. And if they wake up here, he doesn't want to wake up alone.

 

__

 

Jensen wakes in slow stages, like molasses going down stairs, only with more nausea. He's got cotton-mouth and a bitch of a headache, and when he's awake enough to identify the sound that's been registering in the back of his mind as the dull irregular noise of typing, he lets out an embarassingly frail groan of protest.

The keyboard noise stops immediately.

"Jensen?" Jared's voice is hushed, but it's still too damn loud. "Are you awake?"

"No."

There's a pause, and then Jensen sucks it up and rolls over, blinking and squinting. The morning light is largely blocked by the still-drawn curtains at the window, and Jared is sitting on the other bed with Sam's laptop.

"Oh my god, you hopeless nerd," he says, or means to say, but it comes out a dry incomprehensible mumble.

"You should drink some water," says Jared, nodding at the nightstand between the beds, and Jensen registers the large glass sitting on his side. He tries to lean up to grab it, but his left shoulder is stiff and sore, and he flops back down. He's going to have to actually sit up for this. Jensen's life sucks today.

The sole mercy is that Jared shuts up long enough for Jensen to recover some semblance of equilibrium. Sitting miserably upright on the edge of the bed, sipping his water, he chooses to continue not thinking about where they are and what's going on. Because if he thinks instead about how each swallow of water is gradually restoring him to humanity, he won't have a complete nervous breakdown in front of Jared. His dignity's suffered enough in the last twelve hours or so. Speaking of which:

"What time is it?" 

Jared glances down at the corner of the screen.

"Uh, just about 8."

Jensen nods, winces, and then remembers something.

"Hang on, wasn't it, like, early afternoon when we... you know." He waves his near-empty glass in a vague gesture, which he hopes encompasses their arrival into this whole confusing situation.

Jared shrugs.

"Yeah, but I don't think that really matters. It was definitely night when we got here. And, man, I don't know about you, but I'm not exactly in a position to turn down extra sleep."

"Yeah, I can tell you've been going short on the beauty rest," Jensen snips, without even thinking. After six years of dealing with Jared's overeager personality, the imperative to keep his distance is programmed to take over at need. He's not used to actually having to interact with the kid offscreen; it's messing with his calm.

Well, or that could be the massive displacement he's feeling from apparently crashing headlong into the fake world he inhabits on TV. Either way, now that he's awake, it's even harder to keep pretending things are fine and normal.

Jared glares at him.

"Dude, what is your problem, seriously?"

"My problem?" Jensen sets down the empty glass loudly. "My _problem_ is that I woke up in a room with _you_ after falling asleep with a sliced-up shoulder that I got from _actually_ jumping out of a window, and apparently, Dean Winchester's life is real. Is that _problematic_ enough for you?"

So much for avoiding the nervous breakdown, then.

Jared snorts.

"It's great how my being here is apparently making things worse for you. You want me to let you do your own first aid next time?"

"No!" Jensen sputters for a moment. "Look, just... you couldn't have picked another bedroom?"

Jared looks away. Inexplicably, Jensen feels a twinge of guilt.

"Anyway, that's beside the point," he continues hastily. "The real issue here is that either I'm insane, or we're _inside Supernatural_."

Jared nods slowly.

"It does look that way. I've been going through the bookmarks on here and all the sites are legit, not just, like, the fake pages our prop guys make. It's kinda creepy. Hey-" his brow furrows as it occurs to him. "-what do you think happened to the real Sam and Dean?"

"Who says there is a real Sam and Dean? Maybe this is some kind of splinter universe that broke off just for us. Maybe we're the only Sam and Dean there is."

Jared is looking at him with an odd expression.

"Wow. You're actually kind of a nerd."

"Shut up, that's my line." Jensen can feel himself going red. "I'm just trying to figure out what's going on here without losing my damn mind, okay?"

"Well, while you're at it, can you try and do it without making me lose mine?" Jared says, turning his attention back to the laptop screen and starting to type again. Unbelievable.

"God, you're such a _diva_ ," mutters Jensen.

Immediately, he has Jared's attention back.

"Excuse me, _I'm_ the diva? Which one of us would have bled out if it weren't for his co-star, huh? I even got you water, but do I get a thank-you? No. All I get is you being a _bitch_ about _everything_."

Jensen is momentarily speechless.

"I," he finally says, "you, listen, I was in _shock_ , dude, what do you want?"

"You weren't just in shock, you were so out of it you were quoting _Annie Get Your Gun_. But that was last night."

"Hey!" This, he can deflect. "You _recognised_ a quote from _Annie Get Your Gun_ cold sober. You should talk."

"You're not listening," says Jared impatiently. He claps the laptop shut and rakes a hand through his stupid hair, the gesture aggravatingly reminiscent of Sam. "Look, never mind. I'm going to go see if there's food in the kitchen."

He goes to leave, but stops in the doorway.

"That doesn't mean I'm making you breakfast, princess."

He leaves. Jensen doesn't move for a few minutes. Then he gets up and goes to look for clothes; he still lacks a shirt, and he could do with a change of, well, everything.

 

___

 

Jared enters the kitchen with a strong sense of unreality. He's convinced his conscious mind to accept the current situation, but he can't help feeling as though any minute somebody's going to call _cut_.

[ _SAM opens the refrigerator and stares inside abstractedly._ ]

Bobby's not in the episode they were filming, but for all Jared knows he could show up at any moment. They're so far off-book by this point that they're in a completely different library.

He has got to stop thinking like Sam. Or should he be thinking more like Sam? Jared has no precedent. He's always been a bit method, but this is a whole new level of character immersion. It's not comfortable. On the other hand, _comfortable_ has never been in the job description on _Supernatural_.

He can roll with this. He can.

He takes out a carton of eggs. Sam hates scrambled eggs, but Jared loves them, so that's what he's having, damn it. It's possible he might also toss in a few for Jensen. Maybe. When he's not actually present and actively bitchy, Jared can't help remembering how he was last night, shock-pale and bled shaky.

He pulls out a frying pan from under the counter and nearly drops it on the floor when he turns around to be confronted with a beige trench coat.

"Misha, holy shit," Jared blurts out. "What are you doing here?"

Misha gazes at him with uncharacteristic intensity.

"I was afraid of this," he says, and his voice is pure gravel.

Shit.

"Uh," says Jared. "You're, uh. Oh, god. You're Castiel, aren't you."

That gets him the _even for a human you're kind of slow_ look, and, wow, it's about seven times more powerful than Misha's.

"Don't leave this house," Castiel says. "I need to have a word with Balthazar."

And then he's gone.

Distantly, Jared catalogues his response to the abrupt departure, so he can use it next time he has to pretend that someone's vanished before his eyes. Jensen was always better at that.

He pulls himself together after a moment and gets the eggs on. There's wheat bread in the box and Bobby's toaster oven is a thing of beauty, so he makes toast. Lots of toast. When the eggs are done he covers them while he butters the toast, and then Jensen says from the doorway,

"Jeeze, you eat a lot."

Jared looks up at the ceiling for support. The ceiling's got nothing. He looks back down at the toast.

"Figured it was just as easy to add a few extra. Get a plate."

Jensen hesitates. Then he's brushing past Jared and pulling down two plates and digging out two forks, and Jared feels less like he's made a mistake.

They eat without speaking. Jared watches Jensen periodically while trying to seem like he's not; his colour is better, especially now that he's eating, but he looks exhausted. Maybe it's because they don't normally see each other before makeup. Jared isn't used to Jensen's actual face.

Jensen looks up and catches his eye. "What?" he asks, as belligerently as possible around the last of his toast. Being Jensen, he manages a pretty high level of belligerence.

"Nothing." Jared turns his attention back to his breakfast. Jensen snorts softly. Jared ignores him.

When they're done, they sit awkwardly for a moment until Jared thinks to say,

"Oh, hey, Castiel was here. Before you came down."

"Bullshit."

"Dude." Jared stands and picks up his plate and fork. "Honestly, Castiel was here in this kitchen. I thought it was Misha, but then he talked."

"Misha talks." Jensen is plainly skeptical, clearing his own dishes as he replies.

"Not like this." Jared shakes his head and starts filling the sink. "It's like, you know how Misha just, like, turns on the Castiel? But the whole time, you know that behind all that, he's still..."

"...Misha," Jensen supplies.

"Yeah, exactly. But this was totally different." It's impossible to put it into words, but he tries anyway. "It was like I, like he had this... presence. Like he's older than everything I know. Like everything I know is a fraction of what he knows. I don't even know. Jensen, just trust me, it was him."

Jensen doesn't scoff at the idea of trusting Jared. Jared's going to put that in the win column.

"Okay, so what did he say?" Jensen's got a dish towel out, and Jared kind of feels bad about how hard he must have guilt-tripped him earlier, except that it was totally justified, and hey, help with dishwashing. Never unwelcome.

"He said we should stay here, and he has to talk to Balthazar."

"What the hell?" Jensen tosses down the towel. "Why do we have to stay here? Jared, we have to get home! There is no way I am spending the rest of my life stuck in _Supernatural_! It's bad enough pretending to get knocked around by monsters for a living; I'm not about to start getting knocked around by monsters for real, with no compensation. This is _crazy_."

"Shut up a sec," says Jared. "Do you really think you can figure out how to get back by yourself? Like, I think maybe we should leave this one to the angels, you know?"

"Right, like half the angels aren't gunning for us." Jensen picks up the towel again and resumes drying.

"They're gunning for Sam and Dean," Jared says slowly, scrubbing at the pan. "I know what you said about us being them, just go with this for a sec. We – they – were a decoy, right?"

"Yeah, but we went off script at the window jump. None of this is supposed to happen in the show. We're supposed to be off in some foxhole warded to the gills with Raphael scratching at the door. So what the hell is going on?"

"Hell if I know, man." He rinses the pan and hands it off to Jensen, deep in thought.

Jensen puts the pan away ("Bottom right-hand cupboard," says Jared, and Jensen grunts) and then opens the fridge and roots around for a moment before emerging triumphantly with a beer.

"It's, like, nine," Jared protests weakly.

"Don't even start," says Jensen, and hands Jared a second bottle. He opens his own on the ragged edge of the kitchen countertop and then heads out of the kitchen. Jared follows suit, trailing after him towards, as it turns out, the front porch.

Technically still part of the house, Jared supposes.

 

_____

 

The sky is brilliantly blue between scraps of leftover cloud cover. Jensen leans on the porch railing as the screen door squeaks and bangs shut. He can tell Jared's kind of hovering behind him, but if the guy can't figure out where the seats are, that's his problem.

He takes a long drink of his beer, closing his eyes as he swallows to shut out the clean-washed beauty of the morning.

This is the weirdest thing that has ever happened to him.

He opens his eyes again, taking in the vehicles - the Impala, Bobby's Chevelle, the big old pickup - and the entrance in the fence, surmounted by the arched sign. That sign actually exists, on this property, near this house. He can almost read the backwards lettering from here. There is actually a yard full of old automobiles out back. He suddenly remembers that Bobby used to have a dog; he wonders if it's still alive. He could try calling, maybe have a look around.

He's an idiot. And they're not supposed to leave the house.

Jared finally makes up his mind and comes up to lean on the railing next to Jensen, backwards so he's facing the house.

"My wife's probably going apeshit by now," he says quietly. "I was supposed to go to a fundraiser with her last night..."

Jensen can't help it. "After the day we had lined up?" he asks incredulously. "She seriously expected you to go out?"

Jared shrugs. "It was important. Anyway, it's moot now." He drops back into silence, and Jensen takes another swallow.

Through the quiet that falls between them, Jensen can hear birdsong and little else. It's a good thing Bobby's place is so isolated; having to interact with people as if he hadn't just been transplanted into an alternate reality would be a massive additional strain.

If nothing else, at least he and Jared are in the same boat.

Before he can think about that for too long, something catches his eye off to the right. He looks, and freezes.

There, just beyond the shadow of the house, a figure stands watching them. It's not Raphael, but Jensen would swear there was nobody there a moment ago.

"Jared," he says quietly. "To my right."

Jared looks and curses under his breath.

"What do we do?"

"Back inside. But don't run." Jensen's not sure why, but running feels like a really bad idea. "Just... casual."

"There is an _angel_ in the yard," Jared hisses. " _Casual_ is a little hard to pull off."

"You're an actor. Act." Jensen turns around in a studiously carefree manner and takes a step toward the door, keeping one eye on the stranger as he does. So he sees the instant the angel vanishes. "Whoa."

"What?" Jared was already a few steps ahead of him.

"Gone." He scans the rest of the yard, though he knows it's a pointless exercise. There's nobody there. He sags back into the railing, a little dizzy from the adrenaline spike.

"Here's what I don't get," says Jared, coming back up beside Jensen and setting his bottle on the railing. "If we _are_ the only Sam and Dean going, why are the angels leaving us alone?"

Jensen shakes his head. "I'm not in love with that theory, man, it was just an idea."

"No, I know," says Jared, all open-faced and sincere. "I'm not trying to, like, shoot it down, I'm just-"

"I get it, it's fine," says Jensen impatiently. "We both want to figure out what's going on. So, Raphael and this other dude left us alone. Possibly because... we _aren't_ the real Sam and Dean?"

"Castiel," says Jared, like he's just realised something. "He knew right away. The first thing he said was, 'I was afraid of this.' So-"

"So the angels can tell," Jensen finishes. "Hang on, hang on." He's almost there. "Okay, listen: in our version of all this, we get zapped off to that angelic safehouse to draw off the search so Castiel can get to the weapons. What if the _real_ Sam and Dean got zapped off somewhere further?"

"Like to our world." Jared picks up the thread. "They came to ours and we got displaced to theirs." He looks at Jensen with dawning horror, and Jensen can only stare back.

"Shit."

The ramifications of this new discovery are coming thick and fast, and he can't quite process it all. Sam and Dean on their set. Sam and Dean in their trailers, in their homes. Sam and Dean with an angel hit man on their tail, because there's no reason to believe that part would differ from their version.

"There's going to be _carnage_ ," Jared breathes. "Like, actual, literal carnage. Jensen. What if somebody gets really hurt? What if _Genevieve_ -"

"Hey, hey, whoa." Jensen grabs Jared by the elbow and gives him a little shake. "Don't think like that, okay? You can't think like that. We've gotta have faith in Sam and Dean, here."

"But she was _Ruby!_ What if they, like, gank her on sight?" Jared's only getting more worked up. Jensen reaches up to grasp his shoulder firmly.

"Dude, you're panicking. Think a second. You know Sam better than anyone. Would he do that without even _trying_ to figure out what's going on?"

Jared stills, obviously trying to get a grip. "I- no. I don't think so. But Dean-"

"Dean wouldn't either, not anymore. And if he did, Sam would stop him. Think about the next episode, man. Sam won't even let him shoot _Samuel_ on sight." Jared is still not looking totally convinced, but he's not on the verge of hyperventilating anymore. "Just believe in them, man. They're morons sometimes, but they're not stupid. They'll figure it out. Let them handle it."

Jared lets out the last of his tension on a breath. "You're right." He nods. "They're not stupid. And they're way better equipped for this than we are, god knows."

"Attagirl." Jensen claps Jared on the arm and drains his bottle, wincing at the pull in his shoulder. "Now if we're done with the histrionics, I need another beer." He turns toward the house.

"Hey, you're not still on Tylenol, are you?" asks Jared worriedly. Jensen rolls his eyes.

"No, _Mom_ , I took a couple of those migraine Advil when I got up. I'm set."

As they go back inside, Jensen resists the urge to do another sweep of the landscape. If any more angels are watching them, he doesn't want to know.

 

____

 

Jared is having a hard time coming up with a compelling reason not to get shitfaced before noon. They're stuck in the house, angels are watching over them – and the irony right there is killing him, by the way – and hey, there is a superpowered assassin chasing after Sam Winchester, who for all he knows is hiding out in Jared's house, putting Genevieve in danger. And there is absolutely nothing he can do about any of it.

So he says, "Hey, you think Bobby really keeps whiskey in his desk?"

Jensen throws him a look that's almost amused, leaning against the kitchen counter with a fresh beer in hand. "Tell me you're not planning on getting shitfaced before noon."

Jared shrugs. "Not seeing too many options right now. We're basically waiting on Castiel, right? Who knows how long that could take?"

"You have a point," concedes Jensen. "On the other hand, he might show up in half an hour and expect us to help with something, and you'll be too hammered to go save your wife."

Jared bristles. "Hey!"

Jensen shrugs. "Dude, I'm just pointing out the obvious, here."

"Whatever, keep rationalizing your need to take cheap shots," Jared spits out. "Don't you dare make it sound like I'm abandoning her."

"Maybe if you didn't keep painting giant targets all over yourself, I wouldn't take the shots." Jensen sets down his beer and crosses his arms. "Seriously, man, what's wrong with you? Where's the guy who set up that charity for abused box turtles, huh? The guy who learned to ride a horse just to impress a girl? Hell, what happened to the guy who drove me _insane_ for our entire first season because he wouldn't leave me the hell alone? You _do not_ get to pick now to start knuckling under." 

Jared blinks. "Um. What?"

" _Man up_ ," Jensen says clearly, then picks up his beer again and takes a long swallow. "We're not getting shitfaced," he elaborates. "Much as I want to."

Jared rakes both hands through his hair, trying to collect himself.

"Okay. Fine. Yeah, no, you're right." He's almost more pissed at Jensen for being right than for going there, but he doesn't need to start another fight. "So... what now?"

Jensen shrugs. "Never thought I'd say this, but I kinda wish Misha was here."

"What?" Jared makes a face. "Why?"

"At least we'd have entertainment, you know?"

There's a beat, and Jared starts to crack; he tries valiantly to keep in the laughter until Jensen's eyes go crinkly at the corners, and then they both just dissolve.

He's never seen Jensen crack up so completely. If he weren't laughing too hard to pay attention, it might be fascinating. As it is, it takes him a full five minutes to get himself under control, and even then he keeps hiccupping out little aftergiggles for a few minutes.

"Man, we're losing it," says Jensen, wiping at his eyes. "We are going to be completely neurotic by the time we get home."

"Please, you've always been neurotic," Jared says on the heels of another chuckle.

"Shut up," says Jensen, without heat.

"Okay, but so, seriously, what are we going to do until Cas shows up? Knit?" Jared crosses to the fridge. If he's not allowed to get plastered, he's at least having another beer.

"Yeah, I bet you know how, too." Jensen is right there, so Jared smacks him upside the head, almost causing him to spill his beer. "Ow," says Jensen. "So you _do_ know how."

"Shut up, it was a school project, I can't even remember," Jared mumbles, closing the fridge and opening his beer.

"I bet you've made, like, a drawer full of alpaca sweaters since you got that beast," Jensen continues. "Alpaca wool is the best thing ever. Hey, will you knit me one?"

Jared gives up and takes his beer into the study. Jensen, of course, follows him.

"Seriously, man, the weather. Been working in Vancouver nearly ten years and the winters still kill me."

"Here's a thought," Jared cuts him off. "Help me find the poker chips."

Jensen shuts up, surprisingly agreeable, and goes rummaging.

Jared turns up a deck of cards in Bobby's desk drawer. "Bingo," he says smugly.

"Yahtzee," counters Jensen from the bookcase across the room. He holds up the jar full of chips and rattles it a little.

"Awesome." Jared clears off the middle of the desk and sits down.

"So what are we playing?" asks Jensen, setting down the chips and pulling up a chair. "And if you say Texas Hold 'Em, so help me, I will beat you to death with this beer bottle."

Jared lets out a startled laugh. "Hell, you're no fun. Five-card stud good enough for you?"

"Fine, fine. You gonna sit there all day, or are you gonna deal?"

Jared starts shuffling.

 

______

 

By the time noon rolls around, Jensen's up a hundred bucks. He figures they're both about equally distracted with wondering what's going on back home, and Jared can bluff surprisingly well, but he's got a tell or two in common with Sam.

"Double or nothing," says Jared after folding yet again. Jensen shakes his head, amused, baffled by his own amusement.

"Yeah, that's totally how this game works." He cracks his neck, rolls his shoulders carefully and makes a face. He needs more Advil. "Lunchtime."

It's Pavlovian, he swears. Jared perks right up.

"I saw leftover soup in the fridge." Leaving the detritus of their game for Jensen to deal with, he makes for the kitchen. With a sigh, Jensen gathers up the cards and scoops the chips back into their jar, then remembers that he left the Advil upstairs. Damn it. It seemed like a good idea, not to carry it around with him so he wouldn't take too much, but the part where it stayed upstairs while he ended up downstairs is kind of a pain.

Jared seems happy enough in the kitchen, honest-to-god _humming_ as he clatters around, so Jensen slips upstairs without bothering him. He swallows two gel caps dry and brings the bottle back down with him.

"What the hell," he says mildly, finding Jared occupied with sandwich-making. "I thought you said soup?"

"It, uh." Jared shoots him a sheepish grin. "Wasn't actually soup."

Jensen grimaces. "Forget I asked. So, sandwiches."

"Sandwiches." Jared nods. Jensen gets another plate.

This is becoming disturbingly routine.

They're in the middle of eating when the sound of an approaching engine breaks the calm. Jensen looks up quickly and meets Jared's startled eyes.

"Is that coming _here_?" Jared asks around a hurried swallow, voice low.

"Nothing else around. You think it's Bobby?"

"Who else?"

"Hey, don't even. Could be the Sheriff. Could be Rufus, or that nice neighbour he scarred for life. You don't know." Jensen's whispering now, fierce and ridiculous.

The engine comes to a stop out front, then cuts off. A door slams, followed by heavy footfalls up the steps and across the porch. The screen door. The key in the lock. Jensen meets Jared's tense gaze: they forgot to deadbolt the front door.

There's a pause. Then, and only because he's listening for it, barely breathing, Jensen hears the front door open, the screen door carefully close. Bobby's booted footsteps are nearly silent.

Jensen couldn't move if he wanted to.

Bobby appears in the kitchen doorway, shotgun trained directly at them. It's all Jensen can do not to wet himself. Before he can decide whether putting his hands up would be the intelligent thing to do or just monumentally stupid, Bobby relaxes and lowers the gun.

"Didn't expect you boys."

"No," says Jared, with admirable calm, "we know."

Jensen shoots him a glance, and Jared raises hysterical eyebrows in return, equal parts _what do you want from me_ and _now what?_

"Uh," says Jensen, then clears his throat and remembers to put on his Dean voice. "Bobby, listen, something real weird's happening, and we, uh," he glances back to Jared for moral support, "we might need your help."

"What is it this time?" Bobby's tone is longsuffering.

"It was Balthazar," begins Jensen, but Jared interrupts.

"No it wasn't, it was Castiel."

"Fine, it was _both_ of them." He shoots Jared a shut-up-and-let-me-tell-it glance. "Balthazar picked a side. He and Cas cooked up this plan, works great, but the thing is..." He cuts another look to Jared, who's got his arms folded, determinedly letting Jensen tell it. Great. "The thing is, Sam and Dean are in an alternate reality."

Instantly, he's looking up the barrel of Bobby's sawed-off again.

"Then who the hell are you?"

"It's kind of complicated," Jared offers, probably aiming for placating, his hands creeping up, trying for nonthreatening. Jensen's are doing the same.

"Give me the abridged version."

"We're actors," Jensen blurts out. "We play Dean and Sam Winchester on a TV show called Supernatural. In our world it's all fake."

"And I should believe this why?" Bobby's not giving an inch, but he's not killing them yet. Maybe because he doesn't know if iron shot will do it. Oh, god.

"Uh." Jensen wracks his brain for something he knows from the show that Dean wouldn't know. "That day you put the okami through the wood chipper, you kept trying to eat that peach cobbler and getting interrupted." He directed that episode; he should know.

"See, all that tells me is that you can read my mind," Bobby says dangerously.

Oh, god.

"Then how do we prove it?" Jared bursts out, sounding frustrated. "Anything we tell you is something a demon or whatever would also know. There's nothing we can say except that we're telling the truth. My name is Jared Padalecki, I'm an actor, and unless there's salt in that gun, it will definitely kill me. What else do you want?"

"Silver knife in the drawer behind you.” He's addressing Jensen. "And just shake out a little salt over your hands, too."

Jensen gets the knife, slowly, and Jared grabs the salt shaker and gets it all over the table in his haste.

"Do I really have to cut myself?" Jensen asks, against his better judgement. Just, he had _glass in him_ yesterday; the trauma's still fresh. "Can't I just, like, touch the flat of it, or..." Bobby's glare could melt stone, seriously. "Okay. Never mind." He steels himself and draws the blade lightly across his forearm, blood welling up in a bright track. He glances up at Bobby, who nods. He passes the knife to Jared, who makes a face and digs into his own forearm with the tip, where the blade is clean of Jensen's blood. Jensen shakes salt out over his hand, carefully avoiding the cut on his arm, and Bobby pulls out a flask, shotgun still trained steady, and tosses it over.

"Just take a swig of that and you'll be clear," he says.

Jared drinks first, then Jensen, and after a moment Bobby lowers the shotgun.

"Well," he says awkwardly, as Jared and Jensen continue to slowly bleed, "I've got a first aid kit in the bathroom."

"We know," says Jensen, with feeling.

 

__________

 

They patch themselves up much more quickly this time around, seated at the dining room table with Bobby standing uncertain guard. He's still eyeing them with distrust, but the shotgun's propped in the crook of the cabinets now, and Jared's feeling considerably less on edge. He re-packs the tape and stuff into the kit while Jensen absently traces lines through the scattered salt from earlier.

The silence is awkward until Bobby shifts and turns his head, eyes darting into the study.

"You boys feel a draft?"

Jared glances to Jensen, who's looking back at him guiltily.

"Yeah, uh."  Jared looks back at Bobby with trepidation.  "You can thank Balthazar for that one.  We... kinda came in through the window."

"For certain values of 'came in'," mutters Jensen.

"Do I wanna know?" Bobby grumbles, heading into the study.  "Oh, for _crying out loud_ ," he bursts out.  "I swear, next time I have to fix something because of goddamn angels, I'm sending Heaven the bill.  Good grief."

Jared makes the mistake of looking at Jensen, who's biting his lip, obviously trying to hold in a laugh.  Jared looks away and bites his tongue, hard, and the immediate, sharp pain distracts him enough that he can get hold of himself.  The last thing they want is to draw Bobby's ire back on themselves.

Bobby storms back into the kitchen and picks up the phone that doesn't have a label, dials a number, and says, "Yeah, Hank?  Yeah, it's me.  Got a window out here needs fixin'... irate customer, my ass.  One of my nephews on a bender, more like... yeah, tomorrow'd be just fine.  Gimme a call 'fore you head out here, all right?  ...yeah, thanks.  Yeah.  See you."  He hangs up and turns his attention back to them.  "While you're here, you boys might as well make yourselves useful.  Got a couple of bodies that need burying.  They're out in the truck."

He turns and starts to leave the room.  Jared, frozen in place, locks eyes with Jensen.  _Bodies_ to bury?  _Bodies of what_ , Jared wants to ask, but he seems to have temporarily lost the power of speech.  Bobby stops in the doorway and fixes them with a glare.

"Are you coming, or what?" he demands.  His tone is galvanising; Jared scrambles to his feet and Jensen does the same.

There are two long, loosely wrapped bundles of tarp in the back of Bobby's truck. Overcome by morbid curiosity, Jared peels back a corner. The corpses look human, and Jared's not sure whether to feel relieved or start puking.  

Between the three of them, they get the bodies lugged around to a relatively sheltered area, shielded from the house and the front lane by vehicle carcasses and the corner of a shed.  There are remnants of something that looks like it might once have attempted to be a vegetable garden, and the earth isn't packed as hard here as it is in the rest of the yard.

"Tomatoes won't grow worth a damn in this lot, but I keep trying," Bobby says casually.  They leave the bodies in the shade, and Bobby hands out shovels.  "Here. Backhoe's busted." Jared and Jensen look at each other despairingly. "Let's get this done."

It's backbreaking labour, is what it is.  Jumping in and out of perfectly pre-dug graves has done nothing to prepare them for this.  The beautifully sunny morning has given way to a punishingly hot afternoon, and Jared keeps having to stop to wipe the sweat off his face before it gets in his eyes.  He's already getting blisters, and, honest to God, he feels like his spine is mangled.  And they're only two feet down, he and Jensen working in one pit, Bobby working on a second.  Embarrassingly, Bobby's grave is almost as deep as theirs, and just as wide.

Jensen pauses to stand up straight for a moment, arching his back, then slumping in evident relief as his spine cracks.  His ears and the back of his neck are already red; he's going to burn like a sonofabitch.  Jared grunts in vague commiseration and leans briefly on his shovel, curling his back to ease the strain and flexing his hands uncomfortably.

"Hey, slackers," Bobby grunts, "these graves aren't gonna dig themselves."

Grumbling inwardly, Jared gets back to work.

Four feet down, it's agony to keep digging.  He figures Sam and Dean have had it worse. Probably.

"I think my blisters have blisters, man," he mutters.

"Least your blisters are still there," Jensen replies waspishly.  "Mine are all broken."

" _Dude_ ," says Jared, wincing in sympathy.

"Almost there, ladies," says Bobby cheerfully.  "We're going the whole six feet, here.  I can't afford to have my yard smelling like a ripe corpse.  But I imagine you knew that."

"Yeah," Jensen grits out.  "We get it."

Since they don't have to leave room for a coffin, Jared's left a stair-step of sorts, so when they're finally to the point where Jensen's in almost over his head, they've got egress.  Jared gets out first, then stands ready to lend Jensen a hand; he looks kind of wobbly and his hands are in pretty rough shape.  He slips and almost falls when his bad arm gives out; Jared grabs him by the wrist and pulls him up the rest of the way.  He nods exhaustedly in thanks.  Apparently he's too tired to get bitchy about it.

Jared peers into the other hole. Bobby's just about finished.  He's left himself an actual set of stairs, cut neatly along the side like he's done this a hundred times before, and Jared realises with a jolt of dull horror that he probably has.  The grave Jensen and Jared dug is an irregularly oblong mess; Bobby's is practically rectangular.

Jared takes a few seconds to be intensely grateful that the things Bobby hunts don't exist in the real world, and that, consequently, there are no hunters.  Nobody who's not an undertaker should be that good at gravedigging.

Then Bobby climbs out slowly and pauses to stretch, his back popping audibly.  "Well, now, that wasn't so bad, was it?"  He tosses down his shovel without waiting for an answer and heads over to where the corpses lie wrapped in their tarps.  Jensen trails behind him and helps him pick up the first one.  Jared gets the other himself, and they unroll the bodies into the graves.  Bobby pulls out a bottle of lighter fluid and a book of matches, then pauses.

"You boys want to do the honours?" he asks, offering Jensen the bottle.

Jensen takes it, and Jared catches the matchbook Bobby tosses over.  Jensen steps up to the edge of the grave Bobby dug and looks down.  He stalls, his gaze caught on the body that's lying at the bottom, limbs twisted a bit from how it fell.  It's the body of a woman, tall and strong, with dark-tanned skin and bleached-blonde hair.  There's no apparent evidence of how she died, or why.

Jensen stands immobile over the grave.  He's breathing shallowly and his face is tense.

"Jensen," says Jared softly.  Jensen blinks, then seems to come back to himself, chest and shoulders rising on a deep breath.  He wastes no more time in dousing the two corpses; Bobby tosses in salt, and Jared lights matches.  The flames reach hungrily toward the sky, only making it halfway up the grave walls.  Once the bodies catch, the smell is devastating.

Jensen looks white under his sunburn.

They stand watching until the fires burn out, smoking heavily.  Jared's blistered hands throb with the beat of his heart.

"Let's close this up," says Bobby.

 

___________

 

Jensen's hands are on fire and his shoulder feels too big to fit or move properly. Filling in the graves is much quicker and easier work than digging them in the first place, but it doesn't feel that way.

He's had long, awful days before. Days of outdoor shooting under a bitter cold drizzle when he was still sore from yesterday's stunts; days when makeup kept having to do touch-ups because he was sweating through his inner shirt with a fever but they couldn't afford shooting delays; long nights of running around the woods in the dark with Jared.

It's all about headspace. You have to figure out how to roll with what you're given, take your discomfort and background it or make it work for you. Push through it. The show waits for no man.

Shoveling dirt over dead bodies in the blazing heat is what he's got right now. All he can do is try and find a rhythm, just keep pushing until it's over.

Except he keeps losing his rhythm; his shoulder's starting to threaten a refusal to co-operate, and his hands keep slipping on the handle of the shovel. It's all very difficult. More difficult than it should be, even, but he can't afford the distraction of thinking that one through, because if he starts thinking too hard he'll stop moving.

" _Jensen_." Jared catches his arm, forcing him to stop. It sounds like Jared's said his name several times already.

"Broke my stride, man," says Jensen, going for pointed humour in his tone and falling miserably short.

"Let me see your hands." Jared is inexorable. Jensen anchors his shovel in the ground with a wince and pulls his hands away.

They're bleeding; there's blood smeared all over the handle and haft of the shovel.

"Huh." Jensen looks at his hands in surprise. "Wonder when that happened."

"Go sit down or something, man, you're done. Bobby and I'll finish up."

"What? No. We're almost done."

"Exactly." Jared looks angry, and it's making Jensen angry too. "You idiot, why didn't you say something? You're working injured, man. How does your shoulder feel?"

"Hurts like hell, but that's not the point," Jensen grits. "I'm not a cripple, Jared."

"I _know_." Jared shakes his head, exasperated. "Bobby, back me up, will you? Look at his hands."

Bobby comes over and peers. "Pity's sake, boy, leave off. We'll finish."

"But I-"

" _No_." Jared stabs his own shovel into the ground and gets right up in Jensen's face, his shadow completely covering Jensen. "If I'm not allowed to get drunk, you're not allowed to work yourself into the ground. If you end up in shock _again_ because you're too stubborn or proud or whatever to let someone else pick up your _completely legitimate_ slack, then I'm just going to _leave you here_ , and Cas can send you home when you get over yourself." He punctuates this with a jab to Jensen's sternum. His blisters have broken now, too. He's not bleeding, though.

Jensen turns around without a word and goes to sit in the shade of the shed. Thankfully, Jared doesn't say anything more, and neither does Bobby. 

Now that he's stopped, everything is screaming at him: his back, his abused shoulder, his hands; especially his hands. It's probably better to let them bleed for now, keep them clean until he gets back inside and they can pull out the first aid kit yet again. Even the little cut on his forearm is stinging again, and his sunburn is smarting: neck, ears, parts of his face, probably even his scalp, if the tight prickly tingle there is anything to go by.

Jared never burns. It's so unfair.

He concentrates on just breathing as Jared and Bobby finish off the job, spreading the excess dirt around and trampling everything so it looks a bit more uniform. When they're done, Bobby puts away the shovels and Jared approaches Jensen. He looks apologetic.

"Need a hand up?" is all he says.

"You'll get bloody."

Jared shrugs and holds out a hand. When Jensen reaches up, Jared unhesitatingly grasps his forearm, so he grabs onto Jared's and lets himself be pulled up. When he lets go, he leaves a smear of blood behind on Jared's rolled-up cuff.

"Every shirt we wreck, I keep thinking wardrobe's gonna kill us," Jensen mutters, turning toward the house. 

Jared laughs, short and bright. "I'm a little more frightened of Sam Winchester, honestly," he says, falling into step beside Jensen. "Shirt's his."

"Yeah, you should be. Sam Winchester could take you down with his hands tied."

"Probably," Bobby agrees, passing them easily. "Get a wiggle on, kids. I ain't gonna wait dinner for you."

He recedes toward the house. Jensen doesn't speed up; doesn't think he even can. Jared doesn't try to hurry him. He's got a momentum going: easier to keep walking than stop, now.

"It must have been a hell of a conversation," Jared observes, out of the blue.

"Which?"

"Cas and Balthazar."

"Oh." Jensen considers this. "Well, it's not like we're top priority in all this. He probably won't bother coming back until everything else is in place. I'm thinking our siege was probably pretty accurate as far as time goes, and if time's running parallel, then we've got a few more hours."

"You did the math?" Jared sounds incredulous.

Jensen snorts. "Not just a pretty face, you know."

"Yeah, I know."

Jensen glances over, startled. Jared shrugs.

Huh.

"Listen," says Jensen, and he's blaming the pain and his lack of focus for this later, god, "I don't hate you, okay?"

"What? I know that."

"No, before," Jensen clarifies. "When we got here, you said you'd rather stay with the guy who hates you. I never hated you."

"Oh." Jared looks thoughtful, absorbing this. "I guess that's good to know."

They lapse into silence, trudging the last of the distance to the house.

 

________

 

By this point, the shine has sort of worn off of the awesome first aid kit. Jared still thinks it's awesome, but he'd be happy if he never had to use it again. Especially on Jensen.

As soon as Jensen's sitting down again, Bobby plunks a glass of water onto the table in front of him. He drinks it pretty fast, but he's not quite gulping it down, which Jared guesses is taking some will power. He's pretty thirsty himself, so he goes and fills a glass before washing his hands, wincing when the soap gets in his blisters. By the time he gets back to Jensen at the kitchen table, the kit's open again and Jensen's preparing to clean the bleeding, broken skin on his own hands.

"Whoa, hey," Jared says. "Let me." Jensen gets that mulish look on his face again and Jared heaves a mental sigh. "I know you can," he says, trying to forestall the inevitable protest. "Just, it'll be easier if I do it."

"Don't be an idiot, kid," says Bobby from over by the stove.

"Yeah, what he said." Jared pauses. "Wait, were you talking to me or him?"

"Him. But don't get complacent."

Jensen's slumped back in his chair, hands sprawled on the table and looking kind of like raw meat, the rest of him looking overcooked. He's still sweating, and pale around the red of the sunburn. It doesn't look good.

"Whatever," he says.

Then Jared notices that there's blood seeping through the shoulder of his shirt, too; just a small patch, but it had to get through a layer of gauze and a t-shirt sleeve to get to that point. Great.

Well, first things first. He grabs a dish towel, soaks it with cold water, and hooks it around Jensen's neck

"Hey! What the hell, man," Jensen rouses long enough to sputter.

"Suck it up, Mr. Heat Exhaustion," says Jared. "I was a lifeguard in high school. Trust me."

Jensen raises his eyes to the heavens, or at least to Bobby's ceiling. "Of course you were."

Jared ignores him and drags a chair around so he's kitty-corner to Jensen's left at the table.

"Okay, I'm gonna start with your hands."

It's not what you'd call a party. Jared's as gentle as he can be, but there's nothing he can do about how it's bound to sting like hell. Jensen takes the end of the towel with the hand Jared's not working on and lays it over his face, where it muffles the hissing and the cursing and hopefully provides a counterpoint to the pain by way of cool relief. It can't mask his tension as Jared cleans, though.

When both hands are clean and bandaged and the cut from the silver knife is dealt with again, Jared says, "Hey, I need to get at your shoulder," and Jensen just grabs the hem of his t-shirt and pulls both shirts off in a tangled mess, almost garroting himself with the wet towel in the process. Jared doesn't laugh, but he maybe smirks a bit. Only until Jensen emerges from the confusion, looking cross, and then Jared gets down to the business of re-doing his work on the glass cuts from last night.

The skin around the wounds is a little red, but it doesn't look infected, just aggravated. The bleeding's pretty much stopped now that Jensen's been stationary for a while, so Jared cleans the cuts out carefully, re-applies ointment and butterflies, and covers the whole thing back up. Then he refills Jensen's glass and hands it to him with some Advil.

"Food'll be done in five," Bobby says. The kitchen smells like chicken and vegetables, and Jared realises that he is ravenous.

"I'm not hungry." Jensen sits forward and starts to rub a hand down his face, stopping halfway with a pained grimace. "Sorry, Bobby. I'm just gonna crash out on your couch for a bit, okay? Wake me if any angels show up." Without waiting for a reply, he heaves himself out of the chair and shuffles into the study, still shirtless.

Jared looks at Bobby, who raises his eyebrows, _fair enough_ , and shrugs. By the time Jared's looked after his own hands – just bandages, to keep the dirt out – dinner's ready.

Bobby, unsurprisingly, is a more than competent cook. Jared's admiration of the man goes up another notch as he eats, and yet another when, after Jared's cleaned his plate with his usual alacrity, Bobby says, "Doesn't look like your friend's gonna need his; go ahead," and gestures to the serving dishes. Jared doesn't need to be told twice.

"So," says Bobby, when Jared's slowed down to normal-people eating speed. "Actors. Really."

"Yeah." Jared swallows. "Really." Suddenly it's awkward as hell, because Jared's thinking about next week's script and how Bobby doesn't know yet that Rufus is going to die. He clears his throat. "Uh, I guess you'd have figured out pretty quick that we weren't Sam and Dean, though, huh."

Bobby snorts. "You're damn right I would have. How you two can look exactly like those boys and still have that much trouble diggin' one little grave..." He shakes his head. "Beats the hell out of me."

"I know, right?" Jared agrees ruefully. Honestly, he's not even offended. It was a pretty pitiful showing. They just are not Winchesters. "I mean, as happy as you're going to be to have the real Sam and Dean back, I think we're going to be even happier to get home." He makes a face when he realises how that sounds. "Sorry, I didn't mean..."

Bobby waves it away. "Kid, I wouldn't wish this life on anybody. I'm just hoping you boys make it home in one piece."

"Yeah, me too," says Jared feelingly, and shovels in another mouthful of chicken.

When he's done, Jared stands up to clear his plate, but Bobby says, "I'll get the dishes, you don't wanna get your hands wet." Jared had almost forgotten about the bandages.

"I could dry?" he offers.

"Naw, go take a load off. I've got eyes; don't think I haven't noticed you're about to fall over."

Now Bobby's mentioned it, it's about seven times harder to pretend he's okay, even to himself. "Are you sure?" he tries, but Bobby just gives him the _what am I, an idjit?_ look, and Jared puts up his hands in mock surrender and turns away.

He's thinking maybe upstairs and a bed might be a good idea, but his feet take him to the study first, where Jensen's lying on the couch, dead to the world. For a minute, he just stands and watches the steady rise and fall of Jensen's bandaged shoulder; his face is a bit pinched, as though even asleep he's still hurting. A familiar urge rises in Jared to _fix it_ , but Jensen isn't some abandoned animal or underprivileged kid. He's a grown-ass man who can take care of himself – mostly – and even if it were any of Jared's business, which he's rapidly becoming convinced it actually is, it's not like there's anything he can do right now.

He reaches out a tentative hand anyway, checking Jensen's temperature. It's cooler than before, no longer feverish, though still on the warm side. After a brief internal debate, he decides that another cold cloth would only wake him up, and that his shirtless state is probably doing its job.

Jared sits down in a chair across the room, some vague justification involving stairs and looking out for Jensen flitting through his mind. Honestly, he might not be completely wrecked, but he's pretty exhausted. He closes his eyes and leans his head back, and somewhere in the middle of listening to Bobby's kitchen cleanup noises, he falls asleep.

 

_____

 

When Jensen wakes up, there is an angel in the room.

Instinctively he flinches back into the couch, the upholstery rough on his heat-sensitised skin. The abrupt motion sets his head spinning slowly; in the dim light, he can't make out the expression on the angel's face.

Balthazar laughs at him.

"Don't look so frightened," he says. "I'm the least of your worries. I've just come to tell you it's almost time to go, so up you get. Chop-chop."

Jensen starts to sit up and wobbles dangerously, almost falling back down. Apparently he's dehydrated again. Awesome.

Balthazar lets out an impatient sigh. "Really? That's going to be a problem for you? There really is nothing of Dean Winchester in you but your looks, isn't there."

"Shut up," Jensen growls.

"Ah, and the voice. I beg your pardon." Balthazar extends two fingers and touches Jensen on the forehead before he's properly registered the gesture. "There. All better. Now, up. We've got a schedule to keep."

"Where's Jared?" Jensen asks as he stands, the sudden absence of all his discomfort washing through him like euphoria. Damn, he feels good as new.

"Collecting your things. He should be down shortly. Now, listen: Raphael is at this moment awaiting the imminent return of his agent. The plan is to bring you to the transfer point so you can take advantage of the window when it opens, pun absolutely intended. This will occur in roughly ten minutes. Understand?"

"Ten minutes. Got it." Jensen starts pulling off his bandages and moves to go around Balthazar out of the room, but Balthazar blocks him.

"Where do you think you're going?" he demands.

Jensen eyes him warily, peeling butterflies off his newly pristine shoulder. "Upstairs? To help Jared?"

"Yeah, I don't think that's really necessary," Balthazar says patiently. "All you need is a shirt. You stay here, Jared will shortly arrive with garments, and then _nobody misses the boat_ , comprende?" As if to drive home the point, a thundering on the stairs heralds Jared's imminent arrival. Balthazar smiles pleasantly and spreads his hands. "You see? Simplicity itself."

Jared appears in the door before Jensen can do anything stupid, like punch Balthazar in the face. He might be feeling a hell of a lot better, but he can't take an angel and most of him knows better than to try.

"I found you a shirt that looks like one of Dean's," says Jared, oblivious.

"Thanks," says Jensen, tearing his eyes away from Balthazar to catch the clothing Jared tosses his way. "Balthazar, you want to give us an even playing field, maybe?" he asks, nodding toward Jared. Fair's fair, after all.

"Oh, that's adorable," says Balthazar. "I just did. However, if you insist..." He turns to Jared and touches his forehead the same way he did Jensen's. Jared inhales and straightens his shoulders.

"Wow. Uh, thanks."

"Yes, yes," says Balthazar brusquely. "Seven minutes, gentlemen."

"Where's Cas?" asks Jensen.

"Here," says Castiel. Jared wheels around with a yelped-out curse.

"That is so much freakier in real life than it looks on TV," Jensen mutters.

"Be that as it may," says Castiel, "an important plan is about to come to fruition. I assume Balthazar's explained the situation?"

Jared looks at Jensen. Jensen looks back at Jared.

"Enough," Jared allows. "We're ready when you are."

"Good." 

Bobby appears in the doorway to the kitchen, holding a bottle of beer. "You got everything you need?"

"Yeah. Thanks, Bobby," says Jared. Bobby nods.

"Shall we?" Balthazar is calm, sounds like they have all the time in the world, but Jensen's pulse picks up.

"Um," he says. "Wait." He looks over at Bobby. "Thanks," he says, feeling awkward.

Bobby nods. "I'd say anytime, but, don't take this wrong, I hope I never see you again." He raises his bottle in salute.

"Same to you," says Jensen.

"We're going now," Balthazar informs everyone. "Goodbye."

Two fingers on his forehead and a wrenchingly disorienting shift of reality later, they're all standing on a dingy motel carpet next to a window. The curtains are open; it looks like it's rained recently, but the moon is visible through the trees across the parking lot. Just outside, directly behind the blood sigil on the window, Raphael stands like a statue, glowering.

Jensen recoils instinctively.

"He won't come in," says Balthazar. "You're not what he wants."

"I _know_ ," Jensen mutters. This is not his finest hour. Has not, in fact, been his finest twenty-four hours. 

"Three minutes," says Castiel.

It feels like an eternity. No one speaks. Jensen, shifting from foot to foot, glances Jared's way every now and then. He's not anxious, not exactly, he just... doesn't want anything to go wrong. If they got stuck here, that would really suck; he and Jared would make terrible hunters. Jensen's never even fired a real gun, would probably slit his own wrists by accident if given a knife, and obviously can't dig a grave for shit. And Jared's about as bad. They'd probably die, and their families would never know what happened to them, and the show would have to be cancelled, and a whole bunch of people would have to find new jobs, and it would be all their fault for getting killed.

Fine. He's anxious.

Jared looks pretty nervous too, though, which makes Jensen feel a tiny bit better somehow. As often as Jensen's glancing at Jared, Jared's glancing at Jensen. At least they're in this together.

Then Jensen looks at Jared and Jared's looking out the window, mouth slightly ajar. Jensen turns to look.

Correction: Jared was looking _at_ the window. He must have been, because Jensen can't look at anything else. The sigil on the window is glowing.

"Looks like that's our cue," says Jared shakily. He sounds so young suddenly that Jensen feels a fleeting urge to take his hand.

"Looks like," he says instead.

Neither of them moves.

Balthazar sighs. "Am I going to have to push you again?"

"No." Jensen steps up to the window; Jared steps up beside him.

The sigil flares bright.

" _Now_ ," says Castiel.

They jump.

 

____

 

And the next thing Jared hears is sirens, what the _hell_. The crash mat is blessedly soft under him, cushioning his landing if not his nerves.

Sirens mean bad news, and given the whole angel-assassin-tailing-their-doppelgangers situation, Jared does not think it would be in the least unreasonable if he were to freak the hell out. He chooses not to. Yet.

He rolls up off the mat and automatically looks for Jensen. Jensen's up, too, looking back at Jared with an expression of determined calm.

Jared wants to ask what the hell is going on, but Jensen's not the one to ask, so he keeps his mouth shut. Wordlessly they move toward the commotion.

They round the corner outside the main soundstage and there, that's what the sirens were for.

Bodies. There are bodies all over the ground, Phil the camera guy, Larry the cable guy, almost everyone in sound, and...

"Oh, god." It gets stuck in his throat, because Kripke is lying there in a blazer and a bloodstained t-shirt and this is real. This is reality, this is home, and people are dead.

He lifts a useless hand to paw at Jensen's shoulder, because _Genevieve_ , and then he can't handle it and he drops to his knees by the wall and doubles over, vomiting.

He feels Jensen's hand on his back, just resting there, and when he spits and draws a shuddering breath, Jensen's voice says, 

"Easy, man. You're okay. She's okay."

"You don't know that," Jared croaks.

"So find out, dumbass. Where's your phone?"

Jared digs in his pocket automatically; he always keeps his phone on him unless they're filming in really terrible weather, and he transferred it to Sam's jeans this morning without really noticing. Apparently Jensen was paying better attention.

He dials Gen and prays.

She picks up on the first ring.

"Baby?" Her voice is thick with worry.

"Baby." He squeezes his eyes shut with relief. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. Are you? Serge called just now and said there was a shooting at the lot, is that true?" she demands.

"Looks like it. But I'm fine, baby, honestly." He sits back onto the pavement, carefully avoiding the mess.

"Oh, thank God. After Misha, I just..." She breaks off. "I don't know what I'd do."

 _Misha?_ Jared wants to ask, but this is probably something he would know if he'd been in the right dimension today. "I know," he says instead. "Me either."

"When are you coming home?"

"Right away. Soon as I can."

"Okay. See you soon. Love you, baby."

"Love you, too."

Relief makes him so weak he almost loses the coordination to thumb the "end" button. He drops his arm and shuts his eyes. She's okay.

"Oh my god, you two are nauseating."

He'd actually almost forgotten Jensen was there. He cracks his eyes open and peers up at him. Jensen's leaning up against the brick like some kind of badass with his arms crossed over his chest, something fond and not at all disgusted on his face, and Jared grins wanly.

" _Yeah_ we are."

Jensen shakes his head and pushes off of the wall. "Come on. Let's dodge the emergency personnel and get you home."

It's easier said than done; the lot is a crime scene, after all. It's pretty crowded and kind of chaotic, fortunately for them, but even so, it takes some careful footwork and some well-placed doses of Jared's best pleading face to get them around the official-type people undetected. When they're finally clear, out on the street and a good block or two away from the yellow tape, Jared takes a deep breath.

"I can't believe we got out of there."

Jensen shakes his head. "I can't believe Kripke didn't."

"Dude, don't. Let's just..."

"Get cabs and get home?" Jensen finishes. He's looking at the sidewalk as he walks, hands in his pockets, shoulders a little tense. He's pulled into himself and it looks all wrong.

Jared stops and peers at him. "Why do we need more than one?"

Jensen, gone slightly ahead, drifts to a stop and half-turns. "Well, I just, uh. I know my place is closer than yours, but you don't want to wait on a drop-off, man. Gen's waiting."

Jared feels a hollow thunk of disappointment at the words. And it's so stupid, because... he forgot. He forgot that they're back, and Jensen and he never got along in this reality, and furthermore they're no longer clinging to one another as the sole known quantity in a strange world. Jared wouldn't exactly blame Jensen if he wanted a second to himself. 

Then he takes another look at Jensen and reevaluates the situation. Maybe it's kind of silly; maybe he's only seeing what he wants to, because Jared doesn't want to let go yet. He's wanted to be Jensen's friend since he met the guy, and now that it finally seems like it's happening, their show is done for and they might never see each other again. Jared really doesn't want that to happen. But if the last day has meant anything, he's pretty sure Jensen doesn't either.

Besides, what kind of friend would he be if he left Jensen to deal with the fallout all by himself?

 _Screw it_ , he thinks. "Dude. As if I'm letting you go home alone right now."

He could swear Jensen looks a little relieved, shoulders loosening a fraction.

"No?"

"Nope. You're coming home and having dinner with me and my wife." _Because we are all still alive._

"I hate to burst your happy bubble, man," says Jensen, "but I don't think your wife likes me very much."

"That's 'cause you never liked me. Now that we're friends, she'll probably give you a chance."

"Yeah?" Jensen looks up again, half skeptical but open-faced, and the tension is gone from his posture.

Jared grins. "Yeah, man." 

Cabs are ubiquitous this time of day; at Jensen's gesture, a yellow taxi noses obediently to the curb. Jared clambers in after Jensen and gives the cabbie his address, then settles back and tries to find room for his legs.

Now that he's not moving, just sitting watching scenery go by, things are starting to catch up with him. It's going to take a shitload of processing, and he better start now: his entire television crew just got shot.

"What, man?" Jensen asks.

"What, what?" Jared throws back. "Seriously? You don't see a reason to be upset about this day?"

"Well." Jensen leans his head back. "Yeah." He shakes his head. "Man, we are so out of a job."

Jared stares at him incredulously for a few seconds, then bursts out laughing. It might be a little hysterical. That's okay, though, because Jensen's laughing, too.

 

 

-end-

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on [Livejournal](http://chibifrieza.livejournal.com/495787.html). Thank you for reading; comments are appreciated!


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